Canyon View to get new road

CEDAR CITY–Canyon View Middle and High Schools will soon have a second road allowing access to the schools because of a concerned community member.

A new road is being built north of the True Life Center Church and 21-eleven Coffee in an effort to ease the traffic congestion going to and from Canyon View schools, on property purchased by the church. True Life Center Pastor Pete Akins said the church purchased five acres for additional parking.

“My wife and I started the church in 2002, and we bought this building in 2005, and over the years it’s just grown. Our parking lot in not sufficient,” he said. “So we just wanted parking and ended up with five acres.”

Pastor Akins’ children attend Canyon View schools, and he noticed a traffic problem due to the schools only having one access road.

“I have four kids that go in and out of Canyon View’s mayhem of a traffic problem every day,” he said. “And I used to drive a school bus for the Iron County School District and this has always just been a problem.”

Acknowledging this problem, Pastor Akins decided to work with the Iron County School District to separate some of the five acres the church purchased so a new road could be built for additional access to Canyon View schools.

“There’s nothing in it for us necessarily, we don’t need the road,” he said. “I just thought Cedar City’s got a problem – let’s address that problem.”

It took two years to complete the engineering and planning for the road, as well as collaboration between True Life Center, the Cedar City Corporation, the Utah Department of Transportation, Cedar City and the Iron County School District.